I pull in a deep breath, and let it out again, slowly, focussing on the sound, withdrawing from the pain, letting it wash past me. I need it to settle, so I can sort out what I’ve done, so I can fix it.

Dugan’s mate’s hand is on my back. She follows behind, gently guiding me towards a chair by the table.

“Now,” she says, and holds up a small jar. “This is gonna hurt, at first. But it will numb the pain.”

“No, no, don’t!” I breathe, and pull away from her. The pain grinds again at the movement. “I can’t, I can’t,” I whisper, through clenched teeth. “I need to . . . to feel it . . . to fix it . . . .”

She shakes her head and reaches out to take my arm, “Don’t worry, youngun—it’s an old family recipe. For just this kinda thing.”

I shake my head, but dare not resist as she carefully lifts my arm up, onto the table. I push down hard with my leg, and focus on the tension there, to keep from tensing anything else. She dips her hand into the jar and pulls out a thick smear of oily-looking ointment. It stinks.

“You’re sure about this?” I beg, but she just waves me off with her clean hand.

“Don’t be such a pup!”

I glare at her: You fucking try stretching a wolf’s muscle over a man’s arm.

And the pain in my arm starts to fade. Holy shit, it’s actually starting to fade!

I look up and she’s smiling proudly. “Now, that wasn’t so bad, was it.”

“What the hell is in that?” I ask, and laugh while cringing, as the pain drains away.

“None of your business, youngun! Now get to your fixing it.”

I nod and she steps away.

Slowly—carefully—I reach into the tissue, regaining awareness of the muscles and fibres in my arm. There are blockages and snags everywhere, snarled lines with jagged edges, caught into each other, tied in knots. Fuck, I made a mess of it. But I feel them now. I start to collect them, in my mind, in my being, taking each in turn. They start to slip into place, like the workings of a lock.

Finally, barely daring to breathe, I change, halfway and back.

And it’s done.

I inspect it, but the pain is mostly gone. It feels right. The skin still hasn’t healed, from where I peeled it off yesterday, and there’s still some swelling, but everything else works again.

Yeah . . . mostly when he refers to emotions and feelings. “The pain wants to be friends” was awesome but now he’s giving personalities to organs. Ideal for me would have been the initial “friends” line, then the followup “it’s not friendly any more” (slight misquotes) and then nothing more for a while. Not to beat a dead horse, just trying to clarify.

I should note that there’s one exception to my seasoning crack—cranberry relish. As far as I’m concerned, that IS a side dish.

. . . I think I was confused once as a kid and gave myself a couple scoops since it had a consistency like applesauce. Turns out I liked the sour taste, and since then it’s been a family joke.